“The Real Housewives of New York:” The more things stay the same, the more they stay exactly the same

So, listen. This episode actually begins, for no good reason at all, with two of the new Housewives and their husbands meeting for dinner and conversation about Boring Things. I understand that they are new and we need to spend more time getting to know them or whatever, but in the newspaper business, we they call this “burying the lead.” Don’t bury the lead! The lead isn’t dead yet!

Instead, we will begin with The Lead, which I have painstakingly dug up from its premature grave: Ramona and The Countess clawing each other’s eyeballs out on a park bench. (Metaphorically of course, mon cheri, these are not The Real Housewives of New Jersey.) The Countess, still stung from Ramona calling her a weekend mother and broadly suggesting that The Countess’s daughter is a drunken ill-bred galoot who gets herself thrown out of the toniest of private schools on a weekly basis, would like an apology, s’il vous plaît. Ramona, however, has another idea: How about no. In fact, perhaps LuAnn owes Ramona all of the apologies for always and forever being a snide and condescending jerk. LuAnn does not argue this point, because HOW COULD SHE, but she rightfully points out that saying something nasty about one’s jewelry is different than attacking one’s parenting or children. But because Ramona does not actually have a defense for this on account of the facts that 1. she did (correctly or otherwise) call The Countess — to her face, no less — a weekend mother who abandons her children in the Hamptons all week long and 2. made disparaging on-camera comments both directly and by implication about Victoria and her behavior, Ramona gets all Manson-Lampy and screams that The Countess is “not listening.”

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The Countess then drags up the whole supposed “blackmail” situation, in which Ramona (off-camera) supposedly called LuAnn and threatened to ruin Victoria’s garage art show by showing up and telling the world about this one time a 15-year-old girl got drunk at The Countess’ house. Ramona first attempts to call The Countess “crazy,” but when that fails to gain any traction, she announces that The Countess tries to pretend her life is perfect (yes) by knocking other people down (yes) while her own family situation is a huge pack of lies (probably, yes). Shockingly, this is still not the apology that The Countess is looking for, and she demands Ramona pull her head out of her “pinot-filled derrière.” Ramona suddenly reminded that she is, in fact, more than likely drunk, begins to mumble something about her manicure. The Countess finally realizes the deep well of crazy that she is contending with and decides to cut her losses, and the two women make some sort of truce wherein they will attempt to be civil to one another. This will last all of the length of time it takes Ramona to finish a bottle glass of pinot ramona.

The Countess, it would seem, did not come out of her confrontation with Ramona unscathed, however. Despite what her “music” career might demonstrate about her lack of self-awareness, The Countess appears to understand that perhaps she has been presenting too-perfect an image of her family life. And so she drags the camera crew out to her Hamptons home to film her berating her 15-year-old son for doing poorly in his French class. There. That should do it. Let’s see Ramona try to claim The Countess pretends her life is perfect now. Échec et mat, you drunk pute.

And now back to the other ones. (Le sigh.) Aviva and Heather and their husbands, Reid and Jonathan, meet for dinner to discuss among other things their Jewishness — or, rather, Heather’s lack of Jewishness. “Jewish by injection,” she calls it, grossing everyone out, no ma’am, you stop that. Jonathan, who shares a last name with a German famous for making lists, explains that though he’s the son of a “famous rabbi,” it took their son, Jax, being born with all sorts of illnesses and health problems to become religious. Aviva asks what kind of parents Heather and Jonathan are, and they basically cop to being terrible, spoiling, overindulgent nightmares. Hey! Their kid required a liver transplant! This totally justifies buying him a new toy or 11 every single week, explains Heather. Aviva, who it would seem has a lot of ideas about how other people should live their lives and no compunction about sharing them, tsks at them for ruining their child. After all, SHE LOST HER LEG, and therefore she is a parenting expert. Heather and Jonathan receive her advice good-naturedly, because who doesn’t love being reprimanded for their parenting decisions — why, just ask The Countess. Speaking of, Aviva and Heather briefly skirt around LuAnn and Ramona’s conflict at Sonja’s cocktail party, and Aviva commends Ramona for her “honesty” and “directness” while also noting that her husband Reid always says, “Say what you mean, just don’t say it mean.” (And, God forbid I open the grammar door and invite people to criticize my own writing — it’s happened before to MY GREAT PLEASURE — but “mean” is an adjective, “meanly” is the adverb that I’m sure Reid intends. The second “mean” is describing a verb, not a noun. But I suppose it doesn’t have that clever double meaning if you were to use “meanly.” Who doesn’t love a grammar pedant?!) Heather, who herself has had a very “honest” and “direct” experience with Ramona, is less inclined to be so forgiving.

Aviva then meets Her Serene Highness Princess Carole Radziwill for a little vintage clothes shopping. This is super boring and essentially nothing happens aside from Her Serene Highness Princess Carole Radziwill unsuccessfully hitting on a man some 30 years her junior, mortifying everyone; Her Serene Highness Princess Carole Radziwill explaining to Aviva that she has an open relationship with a band member of Journey Aerosmith, causing Aviva to retreat to her fainting couch whilst clutching her pearls; and Her Serene Highness Princess Carole Radziwill managing to work in the fact that she has been to Afghanistan because she is a Very Important Princess Journalist (who writes stories about the Kardashians for Glamour Magazine).

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Her Serene Highness Princess Carole Radziwill then introduces us to her “rockstar” boyfriend, Russ, as the two drive around Manhattan in his convertible listening to his music that he supposedly wrote about her. Let’s learn about Rockstar Russ, shall we? Why! What a coincidence! Rockstar Russ has a new video that debuted at the same time that The Real Housewives of New York City returned on Bravo! WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? According to Wikipedia, Rockstar Russ played not only with Aerosmith, but Sting, Bryan Adams and the powerhouse Roxette (!!!!), and has written songs for Foreigner, Meat Loaf, Scorpions, someone named Phil X, and Clay Aiken. It seems Rockstar Russ is responsible for so much terribleness! He is the prince of the pussyrock nation! Well done, Her Serene Highness Princess Carole Radziwill! He will certainly write you many songs that will live on soft rock radio forever.

And in other boring news, we join Heather and her family as they celebrate her recently passed father at her Berkshires home. She and her sister loved their father very much. Cheers.

The only interesting Heather moment of the episode is a brief interlude when the editors play “compare and contrast” with Heather and Aviva’s families. Aviva’s children are perfect and blond and sit in their chairs and make pithy (if grammatically incorrect) comments and have good manners. Heather’s children are unruly and rude and stand in their chairs and grab food off of their mother’s plate and wield knives. AND I JUST HAD A GENIUS IDEA: WE INTRODUCE JAX TO MORTADELLA AND WE GIVE THEM THEIR OWN REAL HOUSEWIVES SPINOFF AND IT WOULD BE PERFECT. NOW TO PLEASE GIVE ME A BAMILLION DOLLARS, ANDY COHEN, BECAUSE THAT IS THE BEST TELEVISION IDEA ANYONE HAS EVER HAD. BOOM.

Ramona and Aviva meet for lunch pinot ramona, and the two of them discuss Ramario yelling at Heather to quit interrupting them, always; Aviva’s dumb and grammatically incorrect saying about saying mean things meanly; and The Countess arriving at the lunch the New Housewives were enjoying dropping a “RAMONA IS BLACKMAILING ME YOU ALL SHOULD HATE HER” bomb and then disappearing in a cloud of Chanel Nº5 and self-righteousness. Aviva lies and makes it sound as though The Countess only told her this, and not all of the New Housewives. But the fib does not prevent Ramona’s mansonlamps from going all twitchy, and from her making snide comments about The Countess’ “music” “career” and how it basically boils down to “A Youtube,” which you can find on “the internets.” Ramona and Aviva agree to always be honest with one another which I am sure will work out well for everyone and they will be the very best of friends forever.

(Cut to Sometime Later This Season:

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Hey, remember Hurricane Irene and how everyone (in the New York media) was FREAKING OUT because there HAD NEVER BEEN A BIGGER OR MORE IMPORTANT HURRICANE EVER IN THE HISTORY OF TIME, AND ZOMG, NEW YORK IS GOING TO HAVE ITS VERY OWN KATRINA EXCEPT THAT IT WILL BE EVEN MORE HORRIBLE ON ACCOUNT OF IT HAPPENING TO NEW YORK CITY?!?!?!?!!!! And, listen, I’m not discounting that it was a bad storm and that people died. But we know a little bit about hurricanes down here in the South, and if we’re all being honest with each other, I’d have to admit that we thought it was just precious the way the national media based in New York City was becoming utterly hysterical over an approaching category 1 hurricane. Especially since the last hurricane to hit the United States had been Hurricane Ike. Ahem.

It turns out there was at least one victim of Hurricane Irene, however: Sonja Morgan’s townhome. The walls are leaking, the ceilings are leaking, everything is leaking everywhere. Sonja calls out a plumber? builder? some giant bohunk with a wrench? whom she wants to watch her as she fishes a Blackberry out of her toilet “look at her pipes.” Sonja finds Bohunk attractive, and so she begins rolling around on the floor and waggling her chest and moaning and talking about her poor intern’s breasts, mortifying everyone.

In other Sonja Morgan news, she has been invited to be a presenter at an LGBT awards ceremony of one sort or another. Everyone attends but for The Countess who was presumably too busy with her “music” “career” making another Youtube. Ramona chats with Her Serene Highness Princess Carole Radziwill, and learns that she is a Very Important Princess Journalist who used to work for Peter Jennings and Diane Sawyer. Her Serene Highness Princess Carole Radziwill seems to leave out the whole “And now I write insipid celebrity profiles for magazines that you impulsively buy at the airport,” part for some reason.

But back to Sonja. As a presenter, she is shoved into a green room somewhere to await her introduction. The fantastic Manila Luzon (who is also a master of the mansonlamp, see below) delivers said introduction, calling Sonja the “voice of reason” on The Real Housewives of New York City. She is not the “voice of reason” on The Real Housewives of New York City. I do not know who exactly could be described as said “voice of reason” on The Real Housewives of New York City, if there actually is one at all, but whomever would be the “voice of reason” on The Real Housewives of New York City, it most certainly is not Sonja Morgan. In any event, Sonja Morgan misses her cue, and everyone stands around saying “Where’s Sonja? Where could she be?” instead of GOING TO THE GREEN ROOM AND TELLING HER SHE’S ON, but whatever, it’s all Sonja’s fault somehow. So Sonja comes out and presents the Very Important Award for Outstanding LGBT Outdoor Campaign (??) and everyone wonders what LGBT stands for because they are a pack of idiots and then Sonja dances with Manila Luzon and some other, less put together drag queen, the end.

11 Responses

If there’s anyone I can’t stand, it’s a hard-rock snob. I’m sick of people like you looking down your perfectly shaped noses (I’m SURE) at people who happen to very much enjoy the music of artists like Foreigner and Clay Aiken. Heck, some of us even like The Beach Boys!! I stopped reading when I reached that portion of your RHONY recap, Therese, because that comment was completely irrelevant and unnecessary. It made me question whether I wanted to waste any more of my time being insulted. I decided I’d rather spend my time counting the tiles on my kitchen floor and the color flects in my countertops than to continue being bad mouthed for my musical tastes.

In other words, Therese, you just lost a reader. And by the number of responses you got on this recap, it would appear that you really can’t afford to lose any. But hey, go ahead and call all your friends and ask them to post comments insulting me for having the stones to stand up to the disrespect you show some of your readers. It won’t bother me a bit, because I don’t plan on reading another word on one of your columns, nor do I give a rip.

I hold my hand up and admit I watch BRTV (Bad Reality TV, not BRAVO TV) – to temporarily turn off the noise in my head – it works. Plus, who doesn’t love watching women with NPD/BPD exploit themselves publicly? I fluctuate between pitying and loathing 90% of the cast on the RHO… series. I hope all the kids make it (except it’s fairly obvious the Guidice kids never had a chance).

The only exception to the above is Bethany. I admire her. She leads an interesting life, she’s consistent, and she’s clever. She also represents hope instead of fear and loathing. She’s positive.

And Therese, please reference the constant incorrect “me” “I” how to follow-a-preposition rule they all break. Even Bethany misuses this one. It drives me crazy!

At first I thought the three new dames were triplets, but after I learned that Carole was Lee Radziwill’s former daughter-in-law, I became interested enough to make an effort to tell them apart. (Like when the mother of my childhood pals put a silver cap on the front tooth of one of her prankster twins.) So now I’ve got it: They’re Lee Radziwill’s former daughter-in-law, the woman with one leg, and the other one.